W.A.S.P. Leader BLACKIE LAWLESS On "Tremendous Amount Of Work" That Went Into Upcoming Anniversary Releases Surrounding The Crimson Idol - "So, When You Say It’s Not New, It’s All New"

January 15, 2018, 4 months ago

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In a new interview with Metal-Rules.com's Marko Syrjala, W.A.S.P. leader Blackie Lawless discusses the 1992 classic album The Crimson Idol, as well as the upcoming re-recorded version of the album (ReIdolized), and the 25th anniversary tour. An excerpt follows:

Metal-Rules: First of all, I would like to congratulate you on this new tour, because it’s been entirely sold out so far. There is a lot of demand for W.A.S.P., and for my eyes, it seems that the band’s popularity is growing again. Is this something that you didn’t expect this time?

Blackie Lawless: "It’s hard to predict. You know what I mean? Who knows how an audience will respond? As an artist, you make the best work you can and whatever happens, happens. You can’t predict anything. As I said, the only thing anyone ever is in control of is the stuff they do. So, anything after that, you hope for the best. But it’s nice to, you know, I’m at a point in my career where I’m trying to make the best records that I can because I don’t think there is anything to prove. The time itself speaks for that. Any artist who can go 20, 30 years. So, the only thing you really can do is keep doing quality work, and that’s my motivation. Yeah."

Metal-Rules: This time you don’t have an actual new studio album to promote, but you’re soon going to release the re-recorded version of The Crimson Idol, which is one of your most significant records to date. Also, the long-awaited movie based on the album will finally see the light of the day. Would you tell more about those upcoming releases and the reasons behind the decision to re-record the old album?

Blackie Lawless: "Yeah. This is what we’re doing now. I mean that new version of the record comes out in February and as well as the movie. So, it was a tremendous amount of work to re-record that album and to put that film together. I had never done anything like this and the amount of work that I took to do it. It was just like it never stopped. I had five guys. After the record was finished, I had five guys working in different places all over the world. Editing that movie, doing special effects on it. I’m trying to coordinate all these guys, I have never done this before. I don’t know exactly, what’s involved and I’m trying to organize them with each other. They’ll send me pictures. They’ll send me 30 seconds of one song and say, “What do you think about this?” Then I’ve got to coordinate this with somebody else that’s doing whatever they’re doing on the film. I mean it’s unbelievable, and I have never done it before. So, it’s a tremendous amount of work. So, when you say it’s not new, it’s all new. It’s just in a way that I never expected it to be.

Read the full interview and check out some great photos, all by Marko Syrjala, at Metal-Rules.com.

2017 marked the 25th anniversary of The Crimson Idol - the legendary story of Jonathan Aaron Steele, which was originally intended to be accompanied by a movie, with several hundred hours of film that were shot to create approximately 60 minutes of movie footage. The album is still considered to be the best of W.A.S.P.'s career, and one of the greatest concept albums of all time! It undoubtedly belongs in every metal head’s record collection.

Napalm Records now presents ReIdolized (The Soundtrack To The Crimson Idol), the 25th anniversary of the iconic hit album plus the original The Crimson Idol movie on DVD and BluRay. For the first time EVER as originally intended - film and soundtrack united and released as one special product. The product will also feature four missing songs that were originally intended to be part of the original The Crimson Idol.

ReIdolized (The Soundtrack To The Crimson Idol) will be released worldwide on February 2nd via Napalm Records.